After the law school’s ranking tanked last year, dropping it to the third tier, USC students and administration went into a panic. In the past two years, administration has scrambled looking for professors, making building plans and renovating existing facilities, and it seems those efforts haven’t gone to waste.
According to the 2014 ranking of the best law schools around the country released last week by the U.S. News and World Report, the School of Law has risen 11 spots to No. 98 this year. That means we’re back in the top 100, which is a pretty big deal. In the past two years, USC has devoted time and money to hiring five tenured professors, upping education quality and lowering the student-to-faculty ratio. These things, along with the Capstone third-year program to train students on practical law skills, have undoubtedly helped boost our ranking a few notches.
That said, the law school has a long way to go, and it’s too early to celebrate. The curriculum must be modernization and expanded to boost our reputation and increase enrollment rates. And while we eagerly await the opening of the new law school building to make us better, we can’t count our chickens before they hatch. Not to mention that there are still numerous southeastern schools, such as the universities of Alabama, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida, that have law schools ranked far above ours.
USC has made great strides in the past two years, but we can, and hopefully will, do better. For now, let’s keep it up.